


the missing part

by ednae



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (because no one can decide what to call these things), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Feelings, Lance (Voltron) Has ADHD, M/M, Mental Link, Mind Meld, No one knows what's going on, Psychic Bond, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Telepathic Bond, demisexual keith, five-way bond but like in a circle, hunk has anxiety, i hc everyone as nd but it's not as obvious in pidge and keith sorry, keith-centric with a few scenes about the other paladins, lots of cursing sorry, mutual pining but it's Lance's fault, pidge is a memer fight me, shit gets messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-28 03:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8430298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ednae/pseuds/ednae
Summary: "I can hear your thoughts," Keith nearly whispered.
  Lance went pale, but that wasn't what Keith was focused on.  Because he could feel the horror creeping up inside himself as Lance heard his declaration.  Because he could feel his own heart skip a beat in time with Lance's.  Because he could feel the rejection bubbling up inside him as Lance frantically worked out what all this meant.
  "Wh—what are you talking about?" Lance said, stumbling over his words even while his mind screamed clear as day please say you're lying just say you're fucking with me don't play these kinds of games with me—
In which the paladins are subjected to the unfortunate consequences of a broken mind meld program.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

"The most important thing—" _maybe if I ask really nicely, Hunk will make me lunch after this_ "—is that we all deal with—" _maybe Hunk can make me something right now?  I am pretty hungry_ "—this situation rationally—" _Hunk's a really great guy; I don't think I've told him that recently_ "—and like adults—" _but if I just_ say _it it'll be weird_ "—while we all work on a way to fix this—" _I'll have to slip it in casually, but when do we ever have conversations about how great Hunk is?  I guess I could start one—_

"Holy shit, Lance, can you shut up?" Keith growled, covering his ears with his hands as if it was going to stop the flood of overbearing thoughts.  As the room was filled with silence—though that was pretty difficult to discern, since Lance never actually took Keith's plea to heart—he realized his mistake in speaking aloud.

Allura was paused with her mouth open and a finger raised, apparently mid-sentence.  Everyone else's eyes were glued on Keith, who sheepishly removed his hands from his ears to avoid making a complete fool of himself.

_He looks like an idiot,_ Lance thought, but the words boomed throughout Keith's head as if Lance had set up an amp when he decided to move into Keith's mind.

"Do you have to insult me in your _thoughts_ , too?" Keith yelled, slowly losing all sense of common etiquette.  "And why the hell are you so loud?"

"You really aren't much better, Keith," Shiro said, his face having twisted in some measure of pain.  A wave of guilt washed over Keith, and Shiro instantly relaxed, sensing his unease.

This was a mess.

It had started out normally—the mind melding process, that is.  They had been having trouble forming Voltron recently because of _someone's_ scattered thoughts, and yesterday—had it really only been one day?—Allura had suggested going through team bonding exercises again.  It had been the first time in a month that they'd used the mind melding headsets, but everything had started off without a hitch.

The familiar feelings of their weird, mystical lion-induced bonds had flowed through Keith, mentally connecting his mind to those of the other four members of Team Voltron.  He could feel Shiro's resolve to work through their tensions, Pidge's vague annoyance at having to deal with the uncomfortable headsets again, Hunk's unwavering commitment to the team, and Lance's—

Well, he couldn't so much _feel_ Lance as he could _hear_ his never-ending thoughts, a word vomit transferred through brainwaves alone.  Which was weird, since the headsets didn't normally allow for such a complete connection to each other's minds.  They could get vague sensations of strong emotions, and they could see pictures based on what was forefront in their minds, as projected on the screens that had appeared in front of them.  But they'd never been able to actually _hear_ anyone's thoughts.  It was an invasion of well-deserved privacy, and neither Coran nor Allura would let something like that happen.

But here he was, receiving every thought Lance had.  At least they'd found the hitch in their team coordination.

_Gotta do this mind meld thing gotta form Voltron focus Lance focus you have to do this it's for the team—_

Keith could recall the intense irritation that had bubbled up at the string of babble that ran through his mind—through all of their minds.

"What the heck, dude?" Hunk had breathed, astounded by the ceaseless thoughts.

"Huh?" Lance had said.  Great.  He was completely unaware of his own predicament.

"Your thoughts," Pidge had replied, pointing to her own head.  "Can you, like, chill maybe?"

"What's wrong?"  That was the last thing Keith had heard before the floodgates opened, and he could suddenly hear everyone else's thoughts, too.

_What's going on?_   Shiro.

_Can he_ be _any louder?_   Pidge.

_I think I might die, probably._   Hunk.

All five of them stopped what they were doing, far too overwhelmed by the shouts within their heads.  Keith couldn't even tell who was who anymore—it all felt like an extension of himself, as if they were all one person in five separate bodies.

_What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—_

_I can hear everyone?  But no one's talking?  What the hell is going on?_

_Stop thinking stop thinking stop thinking stop thinking—_

_God, shut_ up _—_

There was a buildup of panic—whose panic, none of them could be sure.  It belonged to all of them, and yet none of them at the same time.  It was a collective mass of anxiety and confusion, all of them screaming at each other while holding their hands over their ears, hoping that they could stop the influx of unwanted thoughts.

And the emotions—god, the _emotions_.  If Keith's own twinges of worry and concern hadn't been bad enough, the multiplication of it five times sure was.  The thoughts were no more painful than the cafeteria back at the Garrison, where he would have had to shout to be heard over the din in the large room.  But feeling five emotions, so unusually aligned in the same panic, was so foreign to him, and the uncertainty of what was happening only caused it all to grow wildly out of control.

_I don't understand what's going on how is this happening that's now how mind melds work what is—_

The collective panic attack was mirrored in the bristle of Keith's arm hair, the increased rate of his heart, the cold sweat on Keith's skin.  His labored breathing filled the room and mingled with that of the other paladins, choking in and out as much breath as they could get at the same time.  Keith could hear it—he didn't know how he could hear it—their hearts beat together at the same time, the blood pounding in his ears five times louder than it normally would.

_What's going on what's happening no one should be hearing this it doesn’t work like this why is this happening—_

The introduction of a new voice almost passed through Keith's consciousness—was it _his_ anymore, or was it all of theirs?—unnoticed, drowned out by the thoughts of the paladins.  Their minds were so much louder than anything external, and Keith thought he had forgotten what the natural world sounded like until Allura spoke again, loudly cutting through the ceaseless voices in his head.

"Paladins!"  Though her voice was loud enough to be heard, it sounded dull in comparison to the colorful voices bouncing around in his mind.

There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief among the five of them, and Keith didn't have time to wonder how thoughts could breathe.

Allura continued, but her voice seemed to become smaller and less important the longer she spoke.  "The mind meld program has begun malfunctioning.  Please, take off your headsets before something goes wrong."

_No shit, Sherlock._

_Who would have thought the program was malfunctioning?_

Way _ahead of you, Princess._

_Take the headset off and everything will be fixed take it off everything will be okay—_

Keith knew what he had to do to make everything stop.  He just couldn't make himself do it.  The flood of emotions, the thoughts shouting through his mind, it was all too loud, too much, and at some point—he wasn't sure when—he had curled in on himself, his breathing shallow and rigid, mimicking the panic of the others.  His eyes were squeezed shut, but he knew that the others were in much the same position.

The outside world didn't seem to exist for him anymore.  So when the headset was ripped off of him, he didn't even realize until someone began shaking him.

"Keith?"  There were two voices.  One belonged to Shiro, the other to Lance.  Keith briefly noted that his head had _stopped_ and the voices had gone mostly silent.  He felt the lack of presence from the headset and concluded that yes, removing the headset did work.  They were gone.  Their minds had separated, and everything was fine.

There was still a buzzing in his mind, flitting about as if it were worried about something.  It was probably just his own concern about the situation, but Keith couldn't help but feel it had a distinctly foreign presence about it.

He finally let himself peek open his eyes, wincing as the flood of lights overstimulated his senses and left him with a headache.  There was a deep grunt from next to him—Shiro.

Keith sat up and his eyes immediately locked with Shiro's.  He was rubbing at his temple with a grimace on his face, but he looked fine otherwise, though concern flooded through his features as he stared at Keith, who appeared to have been the last one to recover from the weird mind-sharing experience.

Pidge was sitting next to Shiro, looking up at him with some kind of begrudging face, but Shiro hadn't seemed to notice.  He was too transfixed on Keith to see anything else.

And then Keith heard his name again.  It was Lance, and he sounded urgent.  Or Keith felt it was urgent.  There was a twinge in his gut that told him he _had_ to turn away from Shiro, to find Lance and let him know he was all right.

The idea raced through his mind and heated up his cheeks.  He wasn't sure where that need came from, but he knew that Lance could mind his own damn business and wait his turn.  It wasn't as if Lance cared so much about Keith's well-being, anyway.

Still, he found himself turning toward Lance, as if pulled by some unknown force.  Lance was looking at him wide-eyed, and Keith wasn't sure why.

"Something must have happened."  It had been Lance's voice, but as they stared at each other, Keith slowly realized that Lance hadn't actually opened his mouth.

"What…?" Keith mumbled, tearing his eyes away from Lance—a feat much more difficult than it should have been, since his gut seemed to keep yelling at him to stay.  He looked back at Shiro, who seemed to confirm his situation with a gaping mouth.

"You're…confused?" Shiro said slowly, working through the words as if they were foreign to him.  "A—Allura, what's going on?"

It was then that Keith finally noticed that both Allura and Coran had come into the training deck.  They were watching the five of them with a mixture of both curiosity and alarm wrinkling deep crevices into their foreheads.  Allura snapped her head to face Shiro as soon as he spoke, but she didn't speak right away.

Keith followed Coran's line of sight as he surveyed the five Paladins in the room.  Shiro was still uncomfortable: his body was rigid, and he was looking directly at Keith as if he would have the answers he sought.  Pidge had turned into herself and was picking at her ear, her face scrunched up in annoyance.  Hunk was just staring at Pidge, his face carefully schooled into impassivity, and Keith couldn't glean any information from it.  He almost didn't look back at Lance, even though his head was _screaming_ at him about his presence just beside him.

He couldn't help it; he let his eyes slide slowly over to Lance, and they instantly found their gazes again.  He didn't show any signs that he knew something was wrong, but he was looking at Keith with something like concern.  As Keith thought about it, he realized that he _knew_ it was concern, and confusion, and a little worry, and he also knew _why_ Lance was feeling these things.

As he processed this new information, his mind seemed to open up, and he was bombarded with thoughts that weren't his own yet again.

_This can't be real I'm just imagining things nothing is actually happening it's just my overactive imagination there's no way—_

Keith nearly choked when the thoughts in his head sounded like Lance instead of himself, but he allowed himself the realization of what had happened.

"I can still hear your thoughts," Keith nearly whispered.

Lance went pale, but that wasn't what Keith was focused on.  Because he could feel the horror creeping up inside himself as Lance heard his declaration.  Because he could feel his own heart skip a beat in time with Lance's.  Because he could feel the rejection bubbling up inside him as Lance frantically worked out what all this meant.

"Wh—what are you talking about?" Lance said, stumbling over his words even while his mind screamed clear as day _please say you're lying just say you're fucking with me don't play these kinds of games with me_ —

"I'm not lying."  Keith found himself responding to the unspoken plea, and a wave of horrifying acceptance washed over him.  He felt like he was going to hurl from the strength of Lance's emotions, so he closed his eyes and tried to find _himself_ among the overbearing presence that was sharing his mind.

When that didn't work, he set his head in his hands to keep himself from falling over.

Allura cleared her throat, and Keith was suddenly hyperaware that he and Lance weren't the only people in the room.  The idea that they weren't alone was simultaneously obvious and inconceivable to him.

"Keith, Lance," Allura scolded, but she sounded more curious than irritated with their interruption, "I was saying that Coran and I believe something malfunctioned with the mind meld program, and we aren't sure what the effects might be.  Care to enlighten us?"

Pidge spoke before either of them could, and Keith was honestly grateful for that.  He could sense Lance's hesitation to speak up—how odd, considering the paladin he was somehow connected to—and the feeling made Keith not want to say anything more, as if it was a secret just between the two of them.

"The _effects_ ," Pidge said, exuding an annoyance so obvious that Keith didn't even need a mind meld to notice, "are that I can hear Shiro's every thought, and it's damn annoying."

The other six people in the room whipped around to look at her, and Keith noticed briefly that Shiro had gone bright red.

"Y—You can?"  Shiro stumbled over his words, balking at the confession.

"Yeah, and your concern for Keith is more than a little nauseating, so can you tone it down a little?"  Pidge held a finger to her tongue as she pretended to gag.

"I—I can't," Shiro admitted, shaking his head and looking every bit as scared as Keith felt.  He didn't like where this was going.  "I…I hear Keith.  In my head.  I know what he's feeling, and it's…really confusing.  And scary, but I think that's more…Keith, than me."

"The mind melding exercise must have had some unfortunate side effects," Allura mused.

"Yes, well, if we just put two and two together, it all makes sense!" Coran exclaimed, taking over the explanation.  "The mind melding program shorted out at some point—it _has_ been ten thousand years since we've done heavy maintenance on it, you see—and I noticed that it wasn't filtering thoughts like it normally does.  It's supposed to just project images and surface-level emotions into a more tangible entity to induce empathy and collective understanding of each other.  Obviously, the program wasn't reducing the amount of thoughts you each received."

"It seems like you had the full force of all of your minds firing away at the same time," Allura said.  "The program isn't supposed to do that, so we rushed out here to remove the headsets before any damage could be done."

Shiro sighed, mimicking Keith's posture by slumping over and setting his head into his hands.  "I think something already happened."

Pidge snorted.  "Good observation."

"Maybe we shouldn't have taken off the headsets," Hunk said with a furrow on his brow.

"My thoughts exactly, Hunk," Pidge agreed, and then she paused.  "Wait.  Those _were_ my thoughts exactly."

Hunk shrugged as Pidge eyed him curiously, but Allura continued on unperturbed.  "Perhaps forcefully interrupting the melding has left your minds open to one another.  Then again, it could have happened when we first began the process."

"I can't hear anyone but Shiro anymore," Pidge said pointedly.  "And thank god for that."

Hunk hummed a little, more curious than anything.  "Are you always this angry, Pidge?"

"Shut up," Pidge snapped.  "Don't mess around in my thoughts."

"I'm not—!"  Hunk held his hands up in surrender, his eyes wide.  "I can't help it when you're basically shouting in my ears."

_I can hear Hunk._   Lance's shock echoed in Keith's brain, loudly reminding Keith of his temporary residency in his head.  He listened long and hard, but he couldn't sense the presence of any of the other paladins—just Lance.  It was at least a step up from all five of them shouting in tandem, but it was still _Lance_.

Coran clapped, as if the predicament was nothing more than a little, happy bump in the road and not a literal shitstain on their brief existence as paladins of Voltron.  "Well, that's an improvement from the worst-case scenario.  At least it's not all five of you anymore, screaming away in each of your heads all the time.  Now it's just one of you!  Always aware of each other, unintentionally listening in on each other's thoughts, feeling each other's emotions, all the time without control….  How exciting!"

Keith blanched at the same time Lance did.  He hadn't even been looking at him, but he _knew_ Lance was freaking out from the string of incoherent babble reverberating in his mind.  He could _feel_ his panic with an intensity that was laced with unidentifiable undertones.

_You can really hear my thoughts?_   Keith was drawn back to Lance, who obviously wanted him to look at him.  It was an overwhelming desire that seeped into Keith's own consciousness until he couldn't resist it anymore.  He looked straight into Lance's eyes.  His pupils were small and his eyebrows were raised, forming deep creases in his forehead.

"Yeah, I can," Keith said out loud, confirming what they both knew was true once again.

_Oh shit._

A spike of foreign panic welled up inside Keith.  There weren't any coherent thoughts, per se, more like a string of _ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit_ —

"We—we have to fix this," Lance breathed, and if Keith hadn't been experiencing Lance's panic attack, he would have thought he was only mildly concerned about their whole ordeal.

"Yeah, no shit," Pidge had said, but her words seemed far away through the haze of Lance's feelings.

There was no way he was going to be able to get anything done with all these—these _emotions_ getting in the way of his training.  No wonder they couldn't form Voltron.  Lance couldn't seem to concentrate to save his life.  And in this case, concentrating actually _would_ save his life.

"Lance," Keith choked out, having a hard time talking because his throat had closed up on him.  "Can you just calm down for _one second_?"

"Wh—what are you talking about?  I'm calm.  Perfectly calm," Lance said, a little bubble of laughter spilling through his lips.  Keith couldn't tell who he was trying to assure, but the panic was not going away.  If anything, it seemed to intensify as Lance came to terms with that fact that Keith could feel everything he felt.

_Oh god it's real Keith can actually hear everything he's going to hate me I can't do this I can't—_

Keith couldn't take it anymore.  He stood up so abruptly that he got dizzy, and he saw Shiro waver out of the corner of his eye before he gritted his teeth against the onslaught of sudden vertigo and stomped out of the room.

He didn't look back when his name was called.  He couldn't tell who had said it over the overbearing _oh shit he's leaving I fucked up everything is all wrong what's happening why is this happening to me_ , but he decided he didn't care.


	2. Chapter 2

It had only taken Lance a day to calm down.  At the least, he was no longer a walking, talking panic attack, and with that development, they had all managed to gather in the dining room at Allura's request—an incredible feat, really, since they had all taken to avoiding each other.  Keith had wanted to put as much physical distance as possible between Lance's thoughts and himself, and he had felt too guilty about putting Shiro through the same overwhelming sensations to be able to face him.  He imagined the others felt the same way.

"Why don't you stop snooping around in my brain, mullet head?" Lance shouted, his words echoing his thoughts and boosting their power.  Everything inside of Keith screamed for him to leave, to get as far away from the intense noise that was way too much for him.  But the part of him that had become nothing more than an extension of Lance begged him to be closer, to hang onto every word Lance thought or said.

Keith ignored the conflicting duality of his thoughts.  "I can't help it with you projecting every stupid thought you have directly to me!" he yelled back instead, his frustration getting the better of him.

Lance may have calmed down, but Keith had only gotten worse with time.

He probably wouldn't have noticed how agitated he had become if he didn't see it mirrored in Shiro's gait.  From the time he walked into the room, Shiro had been stiff and rigid, and he couldn't stop tapping or shaking his leg from the second-hand tension that he received.

So yeah, Keith was a mess.

He was filled to the brim with anxiety, and the booming thoughts that Lance projected were only making things worse.

_He's terrible._

Keith rolled his eyes, trying to hide from Shiro the instinctual grip of pain that tore through him.  When he noticed Shiro's eyes dart to him, he realized he failed.  "Sorry I'm so _terrible_ , Lance, but I can't say it's much fun sharing my mind with you, either."

He felt another lash of pain, but he recognized it distinctly from his own.  Or at least, he thought he did.  There was a moment in which he questioned whether it belonged to him or Lance, and he worried for a moment that it would become harder to recognize the longer they were connected.

"Oh yeah?  I just feel sorry for Shiro.  Hunk's a _way_ better mind partner than you would be!" Lance shouted, but there was no anger to back up his words.  Sure, there was plenty of malice in his voice, but Keith's mind had gone strangely silent.  He supposed he should take that as a good sign, but with the silence came an uncomfortable hollow feeling, as if it were natural to harbor someone else's thoughts inside his mind and that the absence of them was tearing him apart.  He had to bite his lip to keep himself from shouting at Lance to think _something, anything_ to let him know what he was feeling.

Hunk held up his hands and leaned back, trying to physically remove himself from the situation.  "Hey, don't drag me into this.  I'm still trying to keep up with Pidge's weird obsession with memes.  I don't have the energy to deal with you two."

 _How dare he insult memes like that_ , Lance thought.  Keith rolled his eyes, trying desperately to ignore the sudden comfort that washed over him at being able to hear Lance once again.

"What _weird_ obsession with memes?" Pidge gasped, offended.  "I'll have you know memery is the highest form of art."

_Tell 'em, Pidge!_

Hunk shrugged.  "Your mastery of all things ironic is truly astounding, but I don't see the point."

"Hunk," Pidge said, peering over her glasses.  "We can't be friends anymore."

 _Literally same._   Keith turned to look at Lance again, trying to figure out why someone would end a friendship over something like memes.

"That doesn't make me any less stuck with you."  Hunk gestured to his head with a grimace.

Pidge gasped in mock offense.  "It is an _honor_ for me to share my unbridled thoughts with you!"

"Paladins…" Allura said, clearing her throat in an attempt to calm them down.  But Keith could barely hear her over the inner turmoil that Lance was feeling.  He could imagine that Pidge and Hunk hadn't even noticed that she spoke.

"Sure, sure, tell me that when I don't have to scramble to understand all that theoretical physics stuff you keep thinking about.  It's starting to give me a headache."

Pidge rolled her eyes and stood up, slamming her hands on the table to emphasize her point.  "I'm _trying_ to think of a way out of this!  I don't really want to deal with another night of Shiro's freaky flashbacks or be woken up an hour and a half after I went to bed because _someone_ has no idea what sleep even means."

_Holy shit._

Shiro seemed taken aback by Pidge's outburst, and Pidge visibly flinched when she received whatever emotion he transmitted.

"…Sorry," Pidge said in a voice much quieter than she had been using.  It was nearly indiscernible over the sound of Lance's thoughts.

_Holy shit did that really just happen I can't believe—_

Pidge sat back down and didn't speak again, and though Keith couldn't feel Shiro's reaction to what Pidge had said, he could imagine just how upset he really was.

_Did Pidge just do what I think she did?_

"Are you using this mind meld thing to talk to me?" Keith mumbled under his breath, leaning almost imperceptibly closer to Lance so he could hear him.  "And now, of all times?"

_It'd be too awkward to speak now._

"If you want me to respond, I have to speak, you know," Keith reminded him.

 _That's your problem, not mine._   Lance's point was emphasized with a little shrug of his shoulders.

Irritation filled Keith, and he quickly glanced over to Shiro with a little jolt of guilt.  He didn't want Shiro to know about the—admittedly rude—conversation he was having with Lance, not when Shiro was obviously not in the mood for light and playful banter.  Or any kind of banter, if the pale face and tensed arms were any indication.

Allura cleared her throat, putting a stop to the conversation anyway.  "Er, as I was saying, we'll all just have to find ways to cope with this situation until Coran and I can fix the program.  Until then, please try your best to cope."  A sympathetic chuckle escaped her, a small smile tugging at her lips in an attempt to soothe the sour atmosphere.

Lance's worries boomed in his head.  _How do you cope when Keith can hear every single one of your thoughts twenty-four-seven?_

Keith rolled his eyes.

He had found out that distance did nothing to stop the influx of thoughts, as he had spent the last night sitting up with Lance—who was on the other side of the barracks—as he wondered the exact thing.  Keith had heard every imagined syllable as if he were still screaming in his ear.

He had also found out that Lance's voice was louder than his music player could get, so he couldn't even drown out the thoughts artificially.

So he had accepted his fate.  Or, he had told himself that he did.  In actuality, he was sitting there, in the meeting room, trying not to die from overstimulation or from the ringing in his head that was most certainly caused by the idiot sitting next to him.

"Well," Lance exclaimed as soon as Allura finished her unhelpful pep talk, "I don't know about you guys, but I'm starving.  Hunk, do you wanna go grab some food goo with me?  Seeing as you're the best brain partner I have, of course."

Hunk stood up with Lance, just as eager to get out of the situation as Lance seemed to be.  Keith watched the two bitterly, wondering why Lance seemed to have hit the jackpot when it came to their hopefully-not-permanent mind-meld experience.

Shiro coughed into his hand, bringing Keith out of his angry little pity party.

"Ah—uh—sorry," Keith muttered.  He didn't want to drag Shiro down with him, not when he had his own problems to work through.  "I, um, I think I'll go to the training deck."  Fighting always helped clear his mind, and he knew that what Shiro needed was peace.  It would be the best for both of them, and maybe it would help get rid of whatever song Lance had gotten stuck in his stupid head.

He left the room humming along without really realizing it.

* * *

There was hurt, of course, but there was also guilt.  It permeated every inch of Pidge's being, washing over her as if the feelings were her own and not someone else's.  Shiro felt _guilty_ that Pidge was experiencing his flashbacks, his panic, his memories, his ineffective coping mechanisms.

As soon as they were alone, Pidge spoke up.  "Shiro, I'm sorry."

Shiro didn't look at her, but he responded, sounding every bit as calm as he usually did when talking with the group.  "There's no reason for you to apologize.  I should—"

"No, you shouldn't apologize."  Pidge cut him off because she knew where that was going.  Of course she knew.  She had heard every word of the sentence just before Shiro had spoken.  "I shouldn't have mentioned that in front of everybody.  It was…really childish of me.  I should have thought about it beforehand."

"I…"  Shiro trailed off, and Pidge could feel his hazy mixture of uncertain emotions deep in her gut.  There wasn't any coherent thought process, but she could tell he was thinking hard about what he wanted to say.  "I don't blame you."

"I know, I know; you blame yourself," Pidge said, leaning forward to put her elbows on the table.  "I don't understand why, though."  She did, really; she could _feel_ the reasoning behind all the guilt.  But Pidge couldn't fathom it into words, and she didn't do well with such abstract feelings.

"It's not your burden to bear," Shiro admitted, clenching his jaw tightly.  Pidge felt a light pain in her tooth where Shiro had bitten down too hard.  "You shouldn't have—you shouldn't have to deal with something like that."  _You're just a kid…_

"Don't call me a kid," Pidge grumbled, and Shiro looked surprised for a moment before realization dawned on him, and then an unrefined series of apologies flooded her mind.  "And I can't believe I'm about to lecture someone who judges me by my age, but you really don't have to deal with that kind of thing by yourself.  Just because you're the leader, or whatever, doesn't mean you were unaffected by what happened to you last year."

Shiro was silent, but his mind was racing.  There were shouts of protest, sure, but Pidge was happy to hear some more rational thoughts.  She almost couldn't keep up with the fight between _no one cares about what you went through_ and _you aren't alone_.  Flashes of Shiro's memories were all caught up in the struggle, and Pidge felt the full, dizzying effect of it all until she couldn't be sure that she wasn't actually Shiro, that Pidge didn't actually exist and she were nothing more than an extension of Shiro's consciousness.  Where did Pidge end and Shiro begin?  Where was the definitive mark that separated Pidge's longing to find Matt and Shiro's uncertainty of his whereabouts?  What tortures had Pidge endured in the past, or had it always just been Shiro alone?

It had been like that before, when Pidge had woken up in a cold sweat to the feeling of wet blood seeping through her shirt.  Pidge had almost seen the red soaking through her prisoner's clothes, had almost felt the sting of pain in her abdomen, had almost smelled the coppery liquid filling her senses.  And then, the entire illusion had left, leaving just Pidge, no longer Shiro, even though he was still a present sensation in her mind.

"Pidge?" Shiro called, breaking through the cloud of memories.  Pidge blinked slowly, remembering that she was Pidge and Shiro was Shiro.  They were two people.  Pidge grasped onto that thought as if it were a lifeline.

"Sorry," she said for what felt like the thousandth time that day.  She was handling this all wrong; she knew that.  "I got kinda…lost, for a second."

"I—" Shiro started, and then he closed his mouth.  "That happens to me, too."  His admittance was like a flood of relief that swept through Pidge, and the inner turmoil inside them both had begun to wash away with the feeling of comradery.

"Often?" Pidge goaded when Shiro paused for a moment, reveling in the idea of discussing his feelings with someone.

"Yeah, it's still so fresh in my mind."  He nodded.  "I don't…remember a lot from that time—"

"You remember enough," Pidge said pointedly, shuddering as she recalled the mountains of Shiro's memories from the past year.

Shiro chuckled at Pidge's face, which must have been appropriately disgusted.  "I guess so.  It's hard to deal with sometimes, but I'm getting by."

"I mean, it's not like you just have to deal with it, Shiro," Pidge said again, trying to make Shiro believe it.  She could still feel the doubt stirring within him.  "You don't have to be strong for us.  We're plenty strong already."  To prove her point, she lifted her arm and flexed, showing the imperceptible tightening of her bicep.

Shiro laughed more heartily this time, accompanied by a warm spread of affection.  It was the first truly positive feeling she'd received from Shiro since the mind meld thing started.  "Thanks, Pidge.  I'll…try to remember that."

"Well, at least remember that you aren't alone for now.  At least until Allura comes up with something to fix that program, I'm stuck with you."  Pidge smiled, and she felt a weight lift off both their shoulders as Shiro smiled back.

* * *

" _Tú sabes que palabra usar, para hacerme suspirar_ ," Keith mumbled under his breath as he ducked out of the way of the gladiator's pole.  Clearly, training hadn't worked in clearing Lance's thoughts from his head.

Shit, he didn't even _know_ Spanish (although somehow he was able to glean something of a translation from Lance's thoughts), but with the amount of times Lance had replayed the song, Keith was positive he had it memorized both forwards and back.

He had grown so accustomed to the repeating lyrics that he wasn't prepared for the sudden shift in thoughts.

_I wonder what Keith is doing…oh shit wait he can probably hear that—!_

The gladiator attacked again, but Keith was still reeling from the change, and he didn't even see the bot coming.  The shock that accompanied the hard blow to his chest sent him flying back with a loud grunt.  He felt tingly all over, but he managed to remember that Shiro would have felt that.  He thought a distinct _sorry_ to make sure Shiro wouldn't worry, and then he pushed himself off the ground to finish off the bot.

He had thrust his bayard into the torso of the gladiator and watched it completely dissolve in a cloud of pixels before Keith fully registered Lance's previous thoughts.  It was the first time he'd heard himself mentioned in the endless stream of babble, and Keith really wasn't sure what to do with the unexpected development.

He was vaguely aware that Lance was worried, and Keith realized that his body had tensed up at some point to mirror Lance's emotions.  But Lance was calming down quickly, and he could almost feel the deep breaths he was taking.

 _Hunk really is the best,_ Lance thought.  So it was Hunk who was calming him down.  From what, Keith wasn't exactly sure.

_I just wish I knew what he could see._

Everything, Keith answered bitterly.  He could see, hear, feel, experience _everything_ going on in Lance's head, and honestly, it was exhausting.  The emotional rollercoaster was so different from Keith's usual shallow pool of dull feelings, and half the things Lance felt, he couldn't even begin to comprehend.  It was all confusing, and so, so overwhelming.

There was a surge of warmth that spread throughout Keith suddenly, and he wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or something else.  What that something else might be, Keith didn't know, but he hesitated to define the warmth as embarrassment alone.

_It's not like that—!_

Keith itched to know what Lance was discussing with Hunk, and he almost had half a mind to go to the kitchen to eavesdrop, but he realized quickly that he was already eavesdropping enough as it was.  Lance deserved _some_ semblance of privacy, especially since he seemed to hate this situation the most out of all of them.

It didn't make him any less curious, though.

He had left the training deck without realizing it, and he was nearly to the kitchen before he was aware of what he was doing.  He skidded to a halt, wondering what strange force had driven him to follow Lance.

Keith didn't like whatever developments were occurring with the mind meld thing.  He assumed that neither Allura nor Coran would have adequate answers as to what, exactly, the ramifications were to being locked into a mind meld for a prolonged period of time, but he supposed it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway.  He didn't know where they were, though, so he was left to his own devices.

Of his observations, two in particular stood out.

One, he felt like his sense of self was slowly diminishing, as if he weren't just _Keith_ anymore, but a combination of Lance and Keith.  It was getting increasingly difficult to tell their emotions apart, and he was getting more and more susceptible to the influence of Lance's feelings.  It was as if Lance's irritation was _his_ irritation, as if Lance's happiness was _his_ happiness, as if Lance's worry was _his_ worry.  He wasn't even sure _what_ he was transmitting to Shiro anymore, since he wasn't sure what was his and what was Lance's.

And two, there was something, like an inherent _need_ , to be close to Lance, if his own experiences were anything to go by.  Hell, he was standing outside the kitchen, which he'd walked to without knowing, and he was fighting with himself _not_ to open the door and fling himself at his mind partner.  Metaphorically, of course.  There hadn't been less than two feet of space between them at any point in their shared history, and though Keith felt drawn to Lance—out of concern for his raw emotion or because of the stupid mind meld, he wasn't sure—he was intent on keeping it that way.  For as long as he could, anyway.

A pang of longing made Keith's mind up for him.  Lance was lonely—had Hunk left?—and apparently that meant that Keith had to fill the void.  At least, it would hopefully soothe the pain that had settled in his gut.

He opened the door with a quiet _swoosh_ , and Lance turned around, eyes wide as he registered Keith.  But they quickly settled into a feigned humor (when had Keith learned to recognize Lance's body language so easily?) and he shrugged.  "So is this mind meld thing like a space Life Alert?" he laughed.  "Just press a mind button and you come running to me?"

There was something stirring in Keith's chest, but he couldn't figure out what it was.  "I—I don't know what you're talking about," he said, turning away from Lance and toward the food goo machine.  "I just got hungry, so I wanted something to eat."  To prove his point, he filled a plate with the lime green stuff and set it pointedly onto a counter before taking a bite.

"I know you knew I was in here," Lance continued lazily.  "I'm starting to get a feel for it all.  Did you know how bad Hunk's anxiety was?  He should probably get some kind of therapist.  Or at least some space Xanax."

"I didn't know," Keith said, trying to keep his words short so he wouldn't reveal that he was thinking about the panic he'd felt from Lance yesterday.  He wondered if Hunk's anxiety was similar, but he didn't ask about it.

"Yeah, it's like he's always so tense.  I keep finding myself clenching my fists or shaking, even.  He's, like, waiting for a bomb to go off, or something."  Lance's voice was nonchalant, but Keith could feel the underlying worry for his friend.  It was much stronger than he was trying to let Keith believe.

Keith hummed instead of voicing his thoughts.  He wondered if he was broadcasting any of it to Shiro before deciding the answer was probably yes.  "I would say there's nothing for him to worry about, but we _are_ stuck in space as the universe's only hope.  I guess there's a lot to worry about, when you think about it."

"I guess so, but man, is it _exhausting_!"  He sighed heavily, leaning back into a wall to prove his point.  Keith chuckled darkly under his breath.

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

"Is that supposed to be some kind of jab at me?" Lance asked, and a mixture of equal parts irritation and confusion bubbled up inside Keith.

"Your nonstop babble isn't exactly easy to ignore," Keith pointed out in an even tone.  It was too late to rescind his words, but he was trying not to rile up Lance any further.  Feeling his rival's annoyance just served to make him angry at himself, too.

It hadn't worked, though.  "Well, _excuse_ me," Lance nearly shouted, and Keith exploded in blistering heat and _why can't you just understand how hard I'm trying it's so hard can't you just understand—_   "Sorry my thoughts are so hard to live with.  Try going almost two decades with them."

Keith winced, crippling under the full force of Lance's words and the scathing heat of his anger.  "I—"

_I tried to keep it from you and make it better for you how ungrateful do you have to be it's not like I can help it—_

"Sorry!" Keith yelled, pressing his hands to his ears.  "Just stop yelling at me!"

A rush of guilt replaced the anger, and he relaxed a little when the thoughts became more bearable.

Lance was silent for a moment, and Keith took the time to pick through the thoughts Lance was inadvertently sending him.  _Don't get mad at him for not understanding, not everyone is like this, most people can focus, most people can have a conversation and stay on topic, Keith's hair is really shiny today, he just doesn't understand what it's like, maybe he'll get it if we stay like this, maybe I'll have someone to relate to, that food goo left a bad taste in my mouth, maybe he could understand me—_

"You don't have to beat yourself up about this, you know," Keith said, chopping off Lance's self-pitying thoughts.  "We all have stuff to deal with."

"What do you mean?"

Keith shrugged, trying to stay calm even though he was still reeling from Lance's emotions.  "Well, there's Hunk's anxiety, Shiro's trauma….  It's not like you're the only one feeling like this."

A grimace tugged at Lance's lips, and a bitter feeling that began to stew in Keith's gut told him those were not the right words to use.

"Um…I mean, like, it's okay to be you," Keith tried again, and the bitterness slowly melted away.  "We all feel like no one really understands us.  Or at least I do.  I can't speak for the others."

There was another sharp twisting in his stomach, but it wasn't painful.  Keith couldn't figure out what the strange emotion was.  He could tell Lance didn't want him to stop talking, though, so he forced himself to continue.

"I guess, even though you have to deal with your shit, you don't have to hate yourself for it.  It's not like you're doing anything wrong by having a different kind of mind."  Keith looked at the plate of goo in front of him.  He couldn't meet Lance's eyes even though he could feel how much his words meant to Lance.  It was a little overwhelming.

_I want to be closer to him._

"Huh?"  Keith looked up, accidentally catching Lance's eye in the process.

"What?" Lance asked, but his eyes were wide like he'd gotten caught stealing.

"What did you just say?" Keith demanded.

A nervous chuckle and an icy cold fear to accompany it.  "I—I didn't say anything."

Keith could feel Lance's total unwillingness to continue with the conversation, so he didn't pressure him any further.  Even if he had wanted to—and really, he did—there was something preventing him from doing so, as if Lance's desires were overriding Keith's and influencing them to do what he wanted.  The idea made Keith feel more than a little vulnerable.

"All right," he said, clearing his throat where it had closed in on itself.  "Well, I'm kind of tired, since you kept me up all night.  I'm gonna go take a nap."

Lance physically and emotionally relaxed when Keith changed the subject back to a more familiar one of bickering and rivalry.  "I did not!"

Keith mimicked Lance's voice as well as he could.  "'Oh, no, whatever shall I do now that Keith can hear my every thought?  I guess I better stay up _all night_ and try different methods to block my thoughts and emotions!'"

"I don't sound like that," Lance grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and slouching over into an over exaggerated pout.  Keith didn't feel any particularly strong negative emotions from him, so he figured this kind of banter was okay.  It was familiar and typical of them, and Lance seemed to radiate appreciation for Keith's consideration.  "And besides, there's no night in space."

Keith rolled his eyes.  "You know what I mean."

Lance just hummed, lifting an eyebrow in a knowing gesture.  Keith took it as a sign for him to leave and finally get some much-needed sleep, but he still had one thing left to say.

"I'm going now.  I'll talk to you later?  Or maybe you'll just think at me—actually, forget that.  Please don't think at me.  I really do need to sleep."

Lance just laughed, a malicious glint in his eye and a twinge of excitement in Keith's chest.  Keith just shook his head.

"And…thanks, I guess?"

Confusion filled Keith's mind to match Lance's scrunched-up face.

"You think my hair's shiny?" Keith prompted.  "Must be the lights in here, or something."

Lance's face soothed into an easygoing smile, but Keith felt a blast of embarrassment and _oh shit oh shit oh shit what do I do I can't believe he heard that_ that knocked his breath from him.  He stumbled forward and gripped at the counter, willing the sudden onslaught of vertigo away.

"Yeah, well, don't let it get to your head or anything," Lance said with a wave of his hand, but from the wary glance he sent Keith's way as he watched him struggle to stay upright, he knew that Keith could see through his ruse.

"Yeah…I'll try not to."  His voice came out breathy and labored, but it was easing up as Lance adamantly thought about _stars and planets and Earth and home and stars—_

When Lance had calmed down enough for Keith to hold his own weight, he rushed out of the room without another word.  Despite the niggling in his mind and the uncertainty surrounding the entire conversation, Keith was sure he had no desire to figure out just what had happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Será Será" aka the Spanish version of Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie."
> 
> Mm just in case it wasn't obvious the first scene is a continuation of the beginning of the first chapter... sorry if it's confusing aaa


	3. Chapter 3

Hunk couldn't sleep.

Well, he _could_ , if numbers and symbols weren't flashing before his eyes, the light from the laptop screen glinting off his glasses.

Wait, no, not his glasses.  He didn't wear glasses.  _Pidge_ wore glasses.  And Pidge also apparently didn't understand the meaning of bedtime.

He almost wished the mind meld worked two ways so that he wouldn't have to get out of his nice, warm bed to gently remind Pidge to go the fuck to bed.  Alas, if only the universe was so kind.

Hunk hissed when his bare feet pressed against the cold metal of the ship, and he wondered just how bad it might be to stay in bed and just not sleep tonight.  Probably pretty bad, he assumed.  He pushed himself off the bed and started down the hall, blinking against the imaginary pixels dancing across his vision.

If he weren't exhausted—he'd been awake for probably twenty hours by now—he would probably be more nervous about this strange and sudden development in the mind meld department.

His vision faded in and out, shifting between the hallway and the laptop which Pidge was furiously typing away at.  If he listened closely, he could hear the tapping at her keyboard.  At the very least, it gave Hunk a good idea of where she was holed up.

He scrunched up his nose without thinking, as if Pidge's slipping glasses would magically push themselves back into place.  They didn't.

He hummed to himself, ticking off sight, sound, and touch for the senses he was receiving from Pidge as she worked.  With the absence of conscious thought or any strong emotions, Hunk supposed that their mind connection thing was able to develop into a more complete fusion.

_I'm sleepy…_

"Go to bed," Hunk whispered to himself, directing the comment to the physically absent Pidge.  He had learned that spoken word was less likely to be transmitted across their connections, and seeing how Lance was probably fast asleep, he didn't really want to bother him.

As he rounded the corner into the training deck, he felt a burst of fear which was quickly soothed into a long sigh.

"Jesus, Hunk!" Pidge shout-whispered, picking her glasses up from her lap.  They must have fallen when Pidge jumped.

"Sorry!  Sorry," Hunk said, moving his hands down in a calming motion.  "I wasn't trying to be quiet."

Pidge grunted, turning back to her work while she spoke.  "I was concentrating.  I'm trying to figure out what might have caused the mind meld program to short out.  I need it gone."

"Don't want me listening in on you anymore?" Hunk teased, not liking the serious expression on Pidge's face and the roiling guilt steaming in his stomach.

"More like I don't think I can deal with Shiro's PTSD anymore."  Pidge shuddered subconsciously as a more contained spike of fear shot through him.  "I told him it was okay, but it's so far from that.  He barely sleeps, Hunk."

Hunk quirked his lips up in a smile despite himself.  "Sounds like you two were made for each other."  Irritation, annoyance, _stop talking you're not making this any better you—_

"Shut up," she grumbled in lieu of voicing her thoughts.  Hunk wondered if she knew exactly what she was transmitting.  "It's really scary, sometimes.  He's been dealing with this for so long.  He knows what to do.  But me?  I've never felt anything like this, and I feel like I'm about to lose it."

Hunk sat down in front of her and pulled the laptop out of her hands, despite the mental protest.  He set it onto the floor before he looked back at Pidge.  "It sounds rough."  Pidge was surprised at his sincerity.

"I…I guess," she said, looking away.  The guilt came back, harder this time, and Hunk was left a little breathless.

"You don't have to feel guilty about this," he chided gently, hoping he could convey his feelings well enough even without the mystical mind bond.

The guilt didn't go away, but Pidge let out a dry chuckle.  "That's, like, exactly what I told Shiro earlier.  He was guilty that I was getting hit with his crazy flashbacks and stuff, but I told him he didn't have to feel guilty about it."

"You're not the one who has to shoulder his burden."  Hunk scooted closer and placed a hand on Pidge's knee.

Fear, anger—not at him, but at herself.  "I said I would, though!" she exclaimed as loudly as she dared, flinging her arms wide.  "I said he didn't have to deal with it all alone.  And he believed me.  And I thought it was okay, but then I had another one of those flashbacks, and I—I _killed_ someone, and I watched them die, and—"

Hunk was all-too familiar with the panic welling up inside him.  For the briefest of moments, he thought it was his own attack before he was able to differentiate the two.  "It's gotta be hard, to experience something like that."

"You're telling me," Pidge snorted, but her voice wavered and her heart was pounding against Hunk's chest.  "I knew Shiro was the Champion, or something, but I never really thought about what that actually _meant_ until—"

She broke off as the panic increased, as she thought about what Shiro had done while a prisoner of the Galra.  Hunk could see vague impressions transmitted from Pidge, but they were second-hand (third-hand?) and hazy.

"Hey," Hunk said, trying to think through Pidge's fear, "can you count to ten for me?"  The steps were like second nature to him, but Pidge's confusion and anxiety clouded his mind until he was struggling to remember what he was trying to accomplish.

"…What?" Pidge asked, eying him curiously.  Her breathing was heavy and erratic, and the word came out as a tonal exhale.

"Count to ten," he repeated firmly.  "Here, I'll do it with you.  Trust me."

He flashed an encouraging smile as they both started counting.  "One…two…three…"

The panic had left the forefront of their minds, replaced by the task at hand.

By the time they reached ten, Pidge had calmed down considerably.

"Okay, can you raise your arms for me?  First right, then left," Hunk instructed, and he was grateful that he was able to focus better on the calming methods.

Pidge lifted her arms as told.  "Why are you doing this?"

He shrugged.  "I'm helping you.  Focus more on your breathing…good job."  His own breathing leveled out as Pidge began to breathe in deeply and slowly, bringing her heart rate down considerably.  She had turned her entire attention toward her nose and the air that was forced in and out of it.

"See?  I knew you could do it," Hunk smiled.

"What's with the pep talks?" Pidge grunted.  Her eyes were squeezed shut, still focused on breathing, but she tilted their head to the side in an obvious question.

"It's, uh, how I calm myself down from an attack," he explained.  "I keep telling myself it'll be all right if I just follow the steps, and it almost always works.  At least if we're not, like, flying around in giant space lions while fighting scary aliens who have every intention of killing us."

Pidge laughed, the first genuine outward expression she had had since Hunk came into the room.  "I can see how that'd need more than a simple 'you can do it!'"  She pumped her fist to exaggerate her point.

"Yeah, psychologists don't usually give you tips on how to calm down when battling freaky purple aliens in space."

There was a silence in which both of them were content, and then a something small and concerning stirred in Hunk's gut.  He looked over to find Pidge's eyes darting around the ship.  "Do you think…we'll end up like Shiro?  After all this is over?"

"Like, the flashbacks and stuff?"

A fleeting terror spiked in Hunk's mind.  "Yeah, like that.  Or the nightmares.  Or the anxiety."

Hunk shrugged.  "Maybe."

_No no no no no no I don't want that please anything but that—_

Hunk grasped at her knee and squeezed, drawing Pidge's attention away from her internal struggle.  "Stuff like this happens, and it's not really something we have a choice in."

"That doesn't actually make me feel any better, but, uh, good try."  Pidge's flat voice and scathing sarcasm were belied by the fear rolling around Hunk's mind.

"It wasn't really meant to make you feel better," he admitted, ignoring the frustrated screaming in his head.  "It's just the truth."

_Why would you tell me something like that you idiot—_

"I'm telling you that so you know what can happen—" _I don't want to know I'd rather live in blissful ignorance I shouldn't have asked I should have stopped thinking about it—_ " _but_ you'll be strong enough to deal with whatever happens."

Silence.  Then: "What if I'm not?"

"You are.  You're dealing with it now, aren't you?  Even if it's not really yours."

Disbelief.  "That's not the same…"

"Yeah, you're right.  Because you're getting the feelings without the trauma to back it up.  You have no idea what's happened, and you're scared because you don't know.  This is worse.  So when— _if—_ you have to deal with something like this again, it'll be like a walk in the park."

"I don't think that's right," Pidge said, her voice empowered by the strength of her worry.

Hunk shrugged.  "Look, I'm not an expert on mind melds or anything; I don't even know that much about trauma.  I'm an engineer, not a psychologist.  This is all just wild guessing at this point."

"Then why—?"

"Because I know you'd be strong enough to deal with your own trauma, especially if you were so willing to deal with Shiro's."  He squeezed Pidge's knee again in what he hoped would convey as a comforting gesture.  To his surprise, he felt the fear and worry start to fade away.

Pidge rolled her eyes.  "I still don't believe you."

"I know."  He could feel the doubt under all the apprehension, growing more prominent as the stronger emotion faded.  "You don't have to believe me."

"This is the worst pep talk I've ever been given."  She breathed out a humorless laugh.

Hunk raised an eyebrow, an upturn at the corner of his mouth.  "Why are you asking for pep talks from someone who's basically an anthropomorphized anxiety attack?"

Pidge shook her head.  "Touché."

Hunk laughed a little before remembering why he had come after Pidge in the first place.  "Uh, you do realize how late it is, right?  How much sleep did you even get last night?"

Pidge hummed.  "Like, an hour?  An hour and a half?  Something like that."  Hunk couldn't even feel sleepiness from Pidge anymore; it must have become an ingrained part of her personality at this point.

"Why do you do this to yourself?" Hunk asked, placing his head in his free hand.

"I like to live life on the edge," Pidge answered, as if it were a suitable response.

Hunk groaned.  "Come on, _I_ want to go to sleep at least.  Give me this one thing."  Pidge grimaced, but she pushed herself off the floor before offering a hand to help Hunk up.  He took it gratefully and stood, wobbling only slightly as his exhaustion hit him.

They left Pidge's laptop behind as they started for their rooms, and they were almost clear of the doorway before Pidge spoke again.  "If Shiro has another nightmare tonight, can I wake you up?  So you can do that calming down thing, with the breathing and counting and stuff."

There was a hint of uncertainty and a lot of embarrassment pressing at Hunk's brain, and Hunk wanted nothing more than to soothe the emotions, even if the idea of being woken up early made him want to cry.  "Of course you can.  It's no problem."  The words that left his mouth made Hunk mourn the sleep he was going to lose in the coming days, but he pushed aside his own selfishness when Pidge's worries were eased, and her emotions finally felt a little lighter than before.

* * *

Keith was still half-asleep when he heard a rapping on the door.  It was quiet but persistent, and the repetition started to get on his nerves.  He groaned a little to warn them away, but apparently that only served to increase their fervor.

" _No me molestes_ ," he grumbled just loud enough for the intruder to hear.

Sure enough, the knocking stopped, and Keith was met with blissful silence.  And then, only a few seconds later, the knocking continued.

_Open your damn door._

Keith swore under his breath.  Lance.  Of course.  He forced himself out of bed, ready to shut the noise up by any means necessary, instead of staying warm and comfortable under the covers like he so desperately wanted to.  Between getting up and staying in bed, the former option was the only one that didn't result in a headache.

The door opened in response to his closeness, revealing Lance's lanky form.  He yawned directly into Keith's face and blinked a few times, his fist still held out in front of him as if he hadn't quite realized that the door was no longer present.

" _¿Qué quieres?_ " Keith asked, glaring up at Lance with what he hoped conveyed the depth of his irritation.

Lance yawned again before answering.  " _Pues…Allura me dijo que hay una reunión.  Pidge descubrió algo_ _—_ wait, wait, did you just speak in Spanish?"  Lance stumbled backward, and Keith was hit with a sudden wakefulness that left Keith's heart beating fast.

"What?  No," Keith said, trying to think back on the few exchanges of dialogue they'd just had.

Lance folded his arms across his chest and scrunched up his nose, thinking hard.  The thoughts raced through Keith's mind so fast he couldn't keep up with them.  "No, no, you totally just did.  I heard it."

"Uh, I hate to burst your bubble," Keith said, not actually hating to burst his bubble, "but I don't even _know_ Spanish.  Unless you count _hola_ , or something."

Keith felt Lance's second-hand embarrassment heat up his cheeks, and he briefly wondered how something like that even worked before returning to the topic at hand.

"But you understood me, and I know _I_ was speaking Spanish, at least," Lance said, his pointed look supported by the overwhelming conviction Keith felt.

"…Huh," Keith grunted.  "Are you sure you were speaking Spanish?"  Because if so, that meant…

"Yeah, duh, I know my own native language," Lance said with a sneer, waving his hand to emphasize his point.  It wasn't as if he actually _needed_ to emphasize his point, though, as Keith felt the mental eye roll Lance seemed to be transmitting on purpose.

"I don't know Spanish," Keith repeated, hoping that he could find an answer to the dilemma in that statement.

"Maybe it's something funky with the mind meld.  Like I know Spanish, and you know my thoughts, so that means you also know Spanish?"  Lance shrugged.

"If that's the case, I wouldn't be able to just _come up_ with Spanish phrases on my own.  It'd have to be scripted."  Keith thought about it all.  "…Right?"

Lance was overwhelmed, and so Keith was overwhelmed.  The double whammy hit Keith with a force that Lance didn't even seem to notice.  Lucky bastard only had to deal with one set of emotions.  Well, excluding Hunk's, of course.

Lance threw his hands into the air to release some of his frustration.  "Hell if I know about anything going on.  What do you take me for, some kind of psychic link expert?"

"Maybe one of the others will know," Keith suggested.  "There's a…uh, reunion?"

Lance lifted his hands to his chin, palm to palm as if in prayer, and he inhaled deeply.  Keith could feel the disappointment encircling him, judging all of his life choices.  "It's a meeting, Keith.  A meeting."

Keith felt defensive under Lance's emotional pressure.  "It's the same thing!"

Lance physically and mentally rolled his eyes again.  "Boy, I'm gonna hit you with an intermediate-level Spanish textbook."

The threat must have sounded better in Lance's head, because there was a tickle of regret rubbing against Keith.  But he waved it off and grabbed at his arm to lead him down the hallway.  He ignored Lance's increased heart rate and how his thoughts became cloudy and weird.  He ignored the odd feeling of _rightness_ and how he wasn't sure who it belonged to.  He still didn't want to know what it meant.

Keith's grasp had slid into Lance's hand by the time they entered the training deck.  It was a weird place to meet, but apparently no one was wasting any time trying to figure out the problem with the mind melding program.  Pidge and Coran were hunched over a headset, discussing theories in technical jargon Keith didn't understand.  Hunk hovered around them, mostly watching and listening, but occasionally giving his two cents.

Keith felt a heavy sense of gratitude pull at his chest, and he tried to ignore the offense he took to Lance's insistence to getting rid of the bond.  Sure, it was annoying, but Lance could at least have _some_ sense of tact.

Or maybe his wanting to break the bond was the normal reaction in a situation like this, and Keith was just overthinking things.

"Houston, we have a problem," Lance announced as he meandered into the room behind Keith.  The five others in the room simultaneously lifted their heads as the door hissed shut behind them.

"What do you mean?" Allura asked, her eyes wide with alarm.

Keith could almost tangibly feely the gears turning in Lance's head as he tried to think of an adequate explanation.  "Keith can speak Spanish now?"

"How is that a problem?" Hunk asked at the same time Pidge and Shiro breathed out mirrored _oh_ s.

"I don't know Spanish," Keith elaborated, and Hunk nodded as he came to terms with what they were saying.

"Well, that's as good a segue as any to explain what I found last night," Pidge said, handing the headset off to Coran and flipping open her laptop.

"Last night?" Hunk asked, rounding on her.  "You told me you went to bed!"

Pidge rolled her eyes.  "I did.  I figured it out as soon as you found me."

Hunk scrunched up his nose as he thought hard.  "Okay, but I didn't get any transmissions of your grand epiphany, or whatever it was."

"Because it wasn't.  I'd mostly figured it out while you were still in your room, and it wasn't like I had some big emotional reaction to something so obvious."  The matter-of-fact tone Pidge used made Keith feel like a moron without even knowing what the topic of discussion was.  He saw Shiro out of the corner of his eyes, and he made an effort to ignore the sympathetic look he gave him.

Lance moved to take a seat, dragging Keith down with him.  They still hadn't let go of each other, and he wasn't exactly sure why.  Lance seemed not to have noticed it, so Keith kept still and tried not to pay attention to their touch.  "So what was this super-obvious discovery you made, O Great Pidge?"  Pidge snorted at Lance's mocking tone.

"The exact one you just made," she explained.  "The bond is a lot more complete than just some flimsy transmission system.  It's more like our minds have attached themselves to each other."

Hunk nodded sagely like he understood, but the other three blanched.  "What does _that_ mean?" Lance sputtered, and Keith closed his eyes against a dizzying bout of confusion and panic.  _Does that mean it's permanent he's never gonna go away he's gonna figure everything out unless he already has what is Pidge_ talking _about_ —

"I have to agree with Lance," Shiro said.  "I'm not sure I follow what's going on."

"Oh, it's simple," Hunk said, and Keith had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes.  "I'm not _just_ Hunk anymore.  I'm both Pidge _and_ Hunk.  At least until we get the program fixed and reverse everything."

Both Pidge and Hunk?  So Keith was both himself and Lance?  What the hell did that mean?

"God, Shiro, stop thinking so loudly," Pidge complained, picking at her ear again as if it would remove Shiro from her head.  "What it means is that we have access to both our minds and the mind of our bond partner, or whatever you want to call this connection.  Which means if I wanted to, I could completely delve into Shiro's mind against his will—" Pidge winced at the glare Shiro sent her, "—not that I would!  Jeez, I was just giving an example."

"Last night, I wanted to figure out where Pidge was because she was keeping me awake," Hunk started, providing them with a more harmless example.  "I was too tired to realize it then, but I actually saw through Pidge's eyes, which let me figure out where she was."

Keith felt a start of surprise, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was his or Lance's.  Maybe both.  Then, with only curiosity guiding him, he reached out autonomously, to find out if he could see the room through Lance's eyes.

When his vision shifted to his right, he thought he had gone cross-eyed.  He could still see the world through his own eyes, but there was an added overlay that darted around quickly, glancing between the other paladins.  When his own face appeared in front of him, he had to bite back a shout.  He saw the surprise in his own eyes before he disappeared, and he had only one set of vision once again.

"Did you just do it?" Lance asked, his voice strangled.  When Keith nodded, Lance's lips went flat and thin.  _I felt it I felt him in my head oh my god it's real it's so real oh my god—_

Lance's thoughts brought Keith back into his own mind—oddly enough—and he suddenly knew what he had meant.  There was some kind of pressure in his eyes, as if weighed down by something.  He looked over to Shiro and saw him jerk, and suddenly the pressure went away.

"You're all so predictable," Pidge sighed.  "I haven't even gotten to the juicy stuff, and you're already climbing over yourselves to invade each other's privacy.  Truly incredible."

"Maybe you shouldn't share the 'juicy stuff' then," Shiro warned, but Pidge brushed the idea off with a nonchalant wave of her hand.

"Anyway…" she said, and Hunk chuckled into his hand beside her, "it also means you can do really weird stuff like access each other's memories or knowledge, like if they were your own.  That includes language."  Pidge stared at Keith and Lance, and they made the connection at the same time.

"I can't hear any of Hunk's memories," Lance interjected, even though his face was still too pale and his head was still screaming.  "He's just beating himself up about not figuring this out sooner."

"Don't say what's going on in my head!" Hunk whined, but he didn't sound offended.  "And that's because I'm not thinking about any memories.  But if you wanted to, you could find them.  I'd rather you didn't, if we're being honest.  And since there's no way I _can't_ be honest with you, I might as well say it out loud."

Keith couldn't really help himself.  If he had better impulse control, sure.  But he wouldn't be himself without the reckless abandon which had gotten him this far in life.  And so when he began to pry, his curiosity getting the better of himself, he'd almost thought nothing of the consequences.

At first, he didn't know where to look.  His subconscious had simply locked onto the idea of Lance, his memories and his knowledge and his mind.  What made Lance _Lance_.  A slow pulse of images that were both totally foreign and yet immediately familiar arose in Keith's mind.  Shimmering blue water and warm sand— _Veradero Beach_.  A short, dark-skinned woman with a blinding smile— _Mom_.  A cozy bungalow nestled within a large front yard garden— _Home_.

Then the pulses sped up, flashing between images of him— _no, Lance_ —at the Garrison: hanging out with Hunk and later Pidge, being scolded by Iverson, watching an all-too-familiar mullet from behind, staring wide-eyed at simulator results and getting more and more discouraged as his— _Lance's_ —name dropped further and further down the list, until the mullet disappeared altogether and he— _fuck, Lance_ —was suddenly a fighter pilot like he'd always dreamed and he was _so happy_ , and then suddenly watching Shiro's ship drop from the sky, and seeing that mullet— _Keith, my name is Keith_ —again after so long and him _still_ trying to take all the glory, and then being _stuck_ in _space_ with him— _no, me, stuck with me_ —but working so well together that suddenly they're improving because of each other and even though he— _me?_ —is so annoying he can't help but admire him, and then one day he wakes up and it's so much _more_ and Keith is so much more and they're such a good team and—

" _Stop!_ " Lance yelled, propelling Keith outward from Lance's mind with a force that had Keith physically toppling over onto his side.

He took only a moment to recover, propping himself up on an elbow and trying his best to formulate an appropriate apology.  "Lance, I—"

Except he didn't even get to use the apology, since Lance cut him off.  "Just—just _stay out_ of my head!"

When Lance let go of Keith's hand and stood up, Keith shivered at the sudden rush of cold air that ran over his skin.  _He knows he knows he knows he knows he knows he knows_ —

He started for the door, footsteps pounding on the floor and in Keith's head.  He tried again.  "Lance—!"

Lance stopped for a second, and the rush of anger and embarrassment left Keith seeing everything through a red-tinted lens.  He spun around too suddenly for Keith to follow, pointing an accusing finger at him.  "You," he said, his voice uncharacteristically venomous even as it shook violently, "are the slimiest motherfucker I've ever met.  Have you never heard of boundaries before?  _Dios mío, y yo que pensaba que tú me gustabas—pero no, ¡me enfermas!  No quiero verte nunca más.  ¡Cabrón!  ¡Come mierda!  ¡Coño carajo!_ "

Through the rage beating against Keith's head, he could only make out a vague translation of Lance's explicit string of insults, and he wasn't sure he really wanted to know exactly what he had said, anyway.  Lance turned on his heel and continued out of the room, and even though the distance grew between them, Keith could still feel Lance seething as if he were right next to him still, breathing hot air down his neck.

The silence Lance left behind him was thick and heavy, but Pidge, always the helpful one, managed to slice through it with a helpful comment: "You probably shouldn't have done that."

Keith screamed his frustrations out, flinging himself backward onto the tile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1: I only know academic Spanish so please let me know if my Spanish is actually awful. I apologize in advance for the potential horror of reading that :v  
> Note 2: I tried my best with Cuban insults. Please correct me if they don't sound natural orz  
> Note 3: This is going to be the only chapter with (extensive) Spanish in it ^^'  
> Note 4: BIG HUGE THANKS to BecauseSin and HiHereAmI for correcting my Spanish. I couldn't find anyone to review it before posting, so I really really appreciate your help!!
> 
> Translations:  
> *No me molestes - Don't bother me  
> *¿Qué quieres? - What do you want?  
> *Pues…Allura me dijo que hay una reunión. Pidge descubrió algo - Well... Allura told me that there's a meeting. Pidge found something
> 
> *Dios mío, y yo que pensaba que yo me gustabas—pero no, ¡me enfermas! No quiero verte nunca más. ¡Cabrón! ¡Come mierda! ¡Coño carajo! - My god, and I thought I liked you—but no, you sicken me! I never want to see you again. Asshole! Eat shit! Fucking shit!


	4. Chapter 4

_I hate you.  I hate you.  I hate you.  I lo—no, I hate you.  Gross.  Disgusting.  No boundaries.  Awful.  The worst.  Terrible.  I hate you.  I hate you.  I hate—_

Keith felt bad enough without the insults Lance was consciously and deliberately thinking at him.  But apparently, Lance wasn't one to let people sulk in peace.  He had to be there to rub salt in the wounds, even if he deserved tenfold the treatment.

Keith paced about his room, rubbing his hands along his arms to calm himself down.  Of course, with red-hot rage blasting through his skull, the notion of "calm" was nothing more than a faraway dream, an idea he could only hope to achieve.

And of course, he deserved it.  He had betrayed Lance's trust without even thinking.  He hadn't meant it, of course; he had just been curious about what it all meant, and then suddenly, he was thrust into a barrage of memories that seemed far too personal for his own comfort.  He hadn't even tried to stop it, since it was mostly common knowledge that Lance had already shared with the team.  Sure, Lance would have been uncomfortable by the invasion of his privacy, but he wouldn't have reacted so strongly.  It would have been fine, until he discovered—

That.

That _thing_ Lance had been hiding, tucked away mercilessly.  No one had known; no one had even suspected such a thing could be true, until Keith had forced his way into Lance's head and took without remorse.

And now he knew.

Retroactively thinking on the days since the mind meld incident had started, it should have been obvious.  Or, rather, it _would_ have been obvious, if Keith had any idea of what to look for.  If he had known what the signs were, or if he knew a single damn thing about affection at all.  It would have been clear as day, and he would have known so much sooner.

But he didn't know the signs, and Lance had capitalized on that fact.  He'd kept it a secret, knowing that Keith wouldn't pick up on the subtleties.  Keith didn't exactly know _why_ it was a secret, and he couldn't hope to glean any insight through the screaming insults in his ear, but he recognized that Lance would have told him if he wanted to.

But he didn't.  He didn't want Keith to know.  And Keith—ignorant, foolish, naïve—didn't even understand what was so glaringly obvious.

The warmth he had felt when Lance was around.

The weird desire to move closer to Lance.

The feeling of rightness whenever he brushed against him.

_I want to be closer to him._

This was all Keith's fault.  If he hadn't pried, Lance wouldn't be mad at him.  It would have brushed over, and the mind meld thing would have been fixed, and everything would have gone back to the way it had been.

_If it's that bastard at my door I'm gonna—Shiro?_

Keith stopped pacing for the first time he'd returned to his room.  Lance had stopped yelling—thinking?—at him?  Something was happening, and Keith wasn't sure what to do.  He almost wished that Lance would keep yelling, since now that he'd quieted, he could _hear_.

He could hear the swish of Lance's door as it opened.  He could hear Shiro's voice, mangled and dull against Lance's vivid mind.  He could hear _Lance's_ voice, so clear and _right_ and familiar yet so different from his thoughts, but no less prominent than the rush of emotions inside him.

Keith fought hard against the urge to listen in, but Keith's mind was Lance's mind and they were one and there was no distinction between the silence of his own room and the voices in Lance's.  There was nothing to grab onto as he slipped between the two minds and he could hear Shiro, stronger, clearer, and Keith was desperate to know.

" _You need to talk to him,_ " he said, and Keith was bombarded with protest, with anger, with _I hate you I hate you I hate you_ , with longing.

" _Talk to him?  He can hear everything I think, anyway.  What's the point?_ "  Lance's voice was laced with venom, his thoughts punctuating each word with _disgusting, vile, horrendous, the worst, pendejo, asshole, cabrón, motherfucker_.

" _Yeah, I know,_ " Shiro said, and Keith felt a prickle of guilt and tension on his skin.  He wasn't sure whose it was.  " _That's why I'm telling you.  You aren't going to get anywhere if you keep shouting at him._ "

" _Technically, I'm not shouting,_ " Lance amended, but there was no fight in his words.

" _He feels bad about what he did._ "  Shiro's grated words indicated more than clearly just how much stress Keith had put him under in the past hours, and he felt the prickle of guilt again.  Definitely his this time.

Lance scoffed, and Keith _felt_ the roll of his eyes.  " _He didn't feel bad when he poked and prodded at my mind like some kind of experiment._ "

" _He tried to apologize,_ " Shiro tried.

" _Yeah, sure._ "  Keith's arm raised in tandem with Lance's, but it dropped to his side as soon as he was aware of its movement.  He could still feel the air running over Lance's skin.

"I did!" Keith shouted at his empty room, rubbing furiously at his ears to try to block out the disembodied voices floating through them.  It did nothing to help.

" _You realize that this is affecting more than just you two, right?_ "  Shiro's voice was stern, exasperated, barely contained frustration.  Lance's guilt welled up inside Keith, and it felt so much more _real_ than his own.

" _Shiro, I—I trusted him, and I thought it wouldn't be so bad because he's apparently the densest motherfucker—_ "

"Thanks," Keith muttered bitterly.

"— _but he went through my mind and I could_ feel _it and I could see what he was looking at and he_ found out _, Shiro.  I was so careful._ "

" _Tell him that._ "  Keith swallowed at the same time Lance did, deep breaths calming their rapidly beating hearts.  If Shiro and Lance were still talking, Keith could no longer hear it over the myriad emotions engulfing him.  He sank to his bed, his legs crippling under Lance's weight, under the fierce anger and hurt and betrayal and longing—

There was a knock on his door, and it swished open before Keith had even registered that someone was there.  But he knew exactly who it was from the physical pull he felt, the coercive _need_ to get up and walk to him.

He lifted his head and met Lance's eyes easily, but he flinched away from the cold emptiness of them, the hard lines of his jaw clenching Keith's teeth together.

There was an icy feeling in his gut, distrust and anger seeping out like geysers through the cracks.  Keith was simultaneously hot and cold from Lance's emotions.

He swallowed around the pain in his throat.  "Look—"

_Idiot_.

"Are you gonna keep doing that?  I'm…trying to apologize."  Keith waited a beat, checking for a change in Lance's feelings.  He sighed when they remained as angry as ever.  He recognized that he had stopped shouting insults, though, so he counted that as a step in the right direction.  He pressed on before Lance could think up some more colorful language.  "I shouldn't have pried.  I knew it was wrong of me, and I still did it.  I don't want to make excuses."

Lance snorted.  "Yeah, well—"  _How can I stay mad, he looks so upset, I should have given him a chance, is it really that bad, is it bad that he knows, how do I continue this, he's so pretty, what do I do—_

"I…I, um, I can still hear that…you know…" Keith mumbled, looking away to cover up a blush.  He could feel a second, phantom heat rising on his cheeks, and he glanced back at Lance for only a moment to confirm the flush coloring him a deep red.

"It's not like I can control my thoughts!" Lance spat out in a rush, waving his hands wildly.  "You could at least not listen in!"

"I don't really have a choice when they're louder than my own thoughts," Keith pointed out.  "Isn't it the same for you and Hunk?"

"W—well, he's pretty quiet unless he's in the middle of a panic attack.  Then there's lots of screaming and freaking out, but he's never really been one to keep those feelings to himself, so I'm kinda used to it."  Lance paused to breathe in deeply.  "Am I really that loud?"

"Yeah," Keith said, and there was a tidal wave of emotion—hurt, guilt, _I'm sorry_ —that nearly knocked Keith back onto his bed.  He shook his head hard, prickles of hair whipping at his face as he tried to reassure Lance.  "No, it's fine.  I'm…it doesn't really bother me."

Skepticism.  "Really?"

Keith shrugged.  "I mean, I've gotten used to it.  It's different, but it's not…bad."

A flood of warmth that Keith was finally able to place as affection.  Now that Lance wasn't trying to hide it anymore, the feeling came through with so much force and openness that Keith felt his breath hitch and his vision go cloudy as his thoughts were shaped by Lance.  He tried to guess if he should feel uncomfortable by that, but the world was dancing in rosy hues around Lance, and Keith's head felt muddled and confused as he tried to separate one mind from another.

"I'm sorry," Lance blurted out, a rush of sincerity that Keith would have believed to be Lance's thoughts if he hadn't seen his mouth move with the words.

Keith tilted his head to the side, squinting a little to convey his confusion.  He could only guess what the apology was for.

"I'm sorry," Lance repeated, "that that I didn't tell you.  About my, uh, feelings."

"You don't have to apologize," Keith said, and he was hit by a force of relief so strong his head was sent spinning.

_I thought you would hate me, I thought you'd never speak to me again, I thought you'd be grossed out—_

"I don't hate you, Lance," Keith sighed.  "I couldn't."  Even if he wanted to, he added silently.  Their minds had been connected for so long now that their emotions irreversibly overlapped, Lance's innocent thoughts influencing his own and shaping and molding Keith into whatever he wanted him to be.  So no, he couldn't hate Lance.

The surge of elation had Keith forgetting why he had any reason to hate his mind partner.  He found himself smiling, mimicking the radiant lightness inside of him.

_He's cute when he smiles_.  "Phew," Lance said, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow.  He'd returned to a lighthearted sarcasm despite knowing that his feelings were swirling around inside Keith's head.  "And here I thought you were gonna leave me or something."  _I really did._

"Yeah, as if _that's_ possible."  Keith rolled his eyes, but he couldn't quite keep up with Lance's sarcasm when the sincerity of his thoughts was overwhelming him, reaching out to him, pulling him closer—

Keith jumped a little when their hands brushed against each other.  He hadn't realized he was so close.  Lance seemed almost in a daze; even his thoughts had quieted all of a sudden, replaced with a low buzzing that Keith somehow knew was Lance's mixture of uncertainty, awe, fear—and affection, always affection.

Keith wanted to say something—anything—to redirect the conversation, but he could feel Lance's breath against his own, and he couldn't quite speak around the lump in his throat.  His face was on fire, mirroring the flush on Lance's, and his heart was racing in time with his.

"I, um," Lance said, licking his lips.  _I want—_

Keith didn't trust his voice, so he instead looked up at Lance expectantly, waiting for him to give him direction.  To tell him what he needed to do to ease the burning in his head, in his chest, in his groin.

He was leaning in again, coerced by some unknown part of his—Lance's?—mind, and when their noses touched, it was like a course of electricity upon his skin, heating him up and begging him for _more_.  More of what?  Lance's mind didn't supply him with any useful information, just pleading _more, more, more_ —

It wasn't until their lips brushed against each other, chaste and not quite _there_ , that Lance's mind snapped to attention, and he scrambled backwards, pressing himself up against the wall.  _No no no no no no no, this is bad this is_ so _bad—_

Keith was confused.  The pull in his mind was Lance—he wanted Keith to be closer.  And Keith _wanted_ to be closer.  To touch Lance, to have him touch back.  To be one in body as they already were in mind.

He took a step toward Lance, and alarms sounded in his head.  "No!  No, no, stay over there," Lance screamed, _begged_ , putting his hands in front of him as if to create a barrier between them.

"Why?"  Keith was confused by the _need_ to be closer to Lance, and though he wasn't sure whose need it was, he couldn't bring himself to care.  And Lance's words contrasted so sharply with his feelings, and Keith didn't understand.

Lance's hands fell to his sides with a clap that Keith felt on his palms, and Keith allowed himself to step back into Lance's bubble of safety.  He could hear _no no no no no_ Lance's thoughts, but the desire and need overwhelmed any fleeting rationality between them.  Keith nodded almost imperceptibly, responding to Lance's unspoken question.  Lance took his hand tentatively, and a burning warmth spread up Keith's arms.  He stared at Lance through his eyelashes, trying to figure out whose warmth it was.

"This is my fault," Lance was saying, but he didn't pull away.  His guilt was washed away by the overwhelming _rightness_ of it all, but his mind was still screaming _no this is wrong wrong wrong_ —

"I don't think it is."  Keith wasn't sure whether he was responding to what Lance had said, or what he had thought.

"No, you don't get it.  It's _me_ , Keith," Lance insisted even as he took a step away from the wall, closer to him.  The warmth inside them had reached its boiling point, and Keith wanted _more, more, more—_

"What do you mean?"

"I'm—I've got to be doing this to you," Lance rambled, words coming out quick in his panic.  "It's not real."

"I'm not making this up," Keith said, but his voice was low and whiny, pleading with lance to stop hesitating and just come closer, lean further, _more, more, more—_

"But they aren't your feelings!"  Lance finally broke contact and Keith was sent reeling, lamenting the cold emptiness on both his hands.  His longing to return, to touch, was twofold in its endeavors to draw them back into each other.  Lance was a magnet, and the way his mind screamed for _closer, closer_ into Keith's had him scrambling to fulfill Lance's wishes, to ease the pit of discomfort and uncertainty that had planted itself in his stomach.

"I know," he said firmly, surprising both of them with his confession.  He realized that Lance was right; these _weren't_ his feelings, it wasn't his romance, it wasn't his lust or longing or attraction.  When Coran fixed the mind meld program, they would be separated, and Keith would probably never again feel the magnetic pull, the warmth, the physical _need_ to be with Lance.

Lance transmitted no emotion to support his own emptiness, and he slumped his shoulders as he gave up.  He could still feel Lance's attraction, his embarrassment, his desire, but it was a buzzing in the back of Keith's mind.  He was right.  None of this was his.  This romance didn't belong to him, and when it was all over, he would go back to being just himself, just Keith, alone without the constant chattering in his head.

"That's why we can't do this," Lance said quietly, and if his thoughts hadn't matched up with his words, Keith wouldn't have heard it.  "I don't want something like—like this."  He gestured between the two of them.

Keith swallowed thickly, pursing his lips together.  The affection— _Lance's_ affection—had died down.  It no longer goaded him into action, and he felt no _need_ to be next to Lance.  He took a step back to test it, and though Lance's mind pulsed with a brief fright, it quickly quieted and left Keith feeling okay with himself.

"I see," Keith mumbled, not daring to meet Lance's eyes.  Lance was hurting enough as it was; he didn't want to add any of his own disappointment to the mixture.  It was enough to let it all brew together inside of him.

"I don't want to make this decision for you," Lance elaborated, taking hold of Keith's chin and turning his head to face him.  Lance was frowning, and Keith nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, you're…you're right," he said, trying to squash his feelings down.  The last thing he needed was Shiro to know how he was feeling about the whole debacle.  He would probably have to have a talk with him later anyway, despite his protests.

"So, uh," Lance hedged, dropping his hand as if Keith's face were red-hot and inching along the wall toward the door.

"Sorry about prying," Keith said, turning to face Lance of his own volition this time.  "I won't do something like that again.  At least, not intentionally."

"Um, don't worry about it."  Lance waved his hand to dismiss the notion.  _I was just scared_.  A bubble of nervous laughter built up inside Keith's throat, but it actually spilled out of Lance's mouth as he realized what he had thought and what Keith had heard.  "I, uh, I should get going."

"Yeah, you should," Keith agreed, but Lance wanted to stay, wanted to be around Keith as long as he could, wanted to be as close to him as possible.  Keith subconsciously took a step forward, responding to Lance's wishes.

Lance shook his head and all but sprinted to the doorway.  "I'll—I'll see you later?"

Keith only nodded, and then Lance was gone.

* * *

Shiro sat next to Keith, his hands clasped together in some kind of silent prayer to an almighty power.  Neither of them had spoken, but Keith knew that Shiro knew exactly what was going on.

"Listen—"

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Keith.  I get it," Shiro interrupted.  He knew all too well what was running through the boy's head.  It didn't make him any more sympathetic, though.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Keith damn near begged, finally turning to meet Shiro's eyes.  "I can't stop feeling it, and it's so weird and I don't know what's mine and what's his."

A pang of disappointment pierced Shiro's chest again, so familiar now that the events of the day were constantly replaying themselves in Keith's head.  The situation was so bizarre, so unnatural, and none of them quite knew how to deal with it.  Shiro wasn't exactly sure what he would do if he were in Keith's position, feeling but not actually _feeling_ an affection that wasn't truly his.  Would he act on the desire that screamed at him, or would he try to do the impossible and ignore a feeling that felt so much like his own?

The only thing he knew was that Lance had done the right thing, even if it had crushed Keith.  Rationally speaking, even Keith knew that it was for the best not to act on something so unstable and unsure, but with the feelings roiling deep in his gut, some of which even Shiro could feel, it was hard to avoid feeling like he had been rejected.

"Keith, I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do in a situation like this," Shiro said with a sigh.  "None of us know how to deal with this, not even Allura or Coran.  I think the best thing we can all do at this point is to just wait it out."

"I can't just wait it out, Shiro," Keith said, the heat of frustration rising up inside them both.  "I feel everything Lance feels, and I can't tell his thoughts apart from my own.  I feel like I'm losing myself."

"I know," Shiro agreed, not really realizing how that must have sounded until he felt guilt clog up his throat.  "Sorry, that came out wrong.  You don't have to worry about me, Keith.  You've got enough to deal with."  The feelings didn't change, but Keith nodded in affirmation.

"How do I deal with it?  It feels like they're my own feelings, and it hurts."  Keith buried his head in his hands, but Shiro could sense his embarrassment from his pounding heart and tense limbs.  He put a comforting hand on Keith's back, and he felt a wave of tension leave his body as he relaxed.

"How has Lance been dealing with it?" he asked softly, trying to get Keith to see the rationality.

A spark of surprise had Shiro blinking.  "I…I don't know," Keith replied, disgruntled words garbled against his confusion.  "It's so hard, and he's _right here_ —" he gestured to his head, "—and it's affecting everything, and all I can think about his _him_ , and how much he _cares_ and everything is so confusing, and I've never felt anything like this before."

_He likes me so much, and I like him back—do I like him back?  I can't tell but it's so real—_

Shiro was hesitant to mention the pulses of affection he received from Keith.  The mind meld was tricky, and though he was certain that Lance's emotions couldn't pass through Keith and into himself, he didn't know how much of Keith's feelings were influenced by Lance's wishful thinking.

"I know it's confusing.  It's the same for all of us," Shiro said gently, rubbing his hand up and down Keith's back in an attempt to soothe his thoughts.  Thankfully, Keith seemed to relax into the touch.  He let out a long breath, and Shiro witnessed Keith's scattered thoughts picking themselves apart into something more manageable.

"What if I don't actually like him?"  Keith's voice was small, mirroring his quiet, wallowing thoughts.

"Then Lance will move on, and everything will go back to normal."  Shiro knew right away that he had said the wrong thing.  Even as they came out of his mouth, they felt wrong, and the added alarm which Keith transmitted left Shiro scrambling to fix what he seemed to have broken.

"That's not it," Keith said, shaking his head wildly.  "I _like_ these feelings.  They're…they're nice."  Keith's wistful tone brought forth just how _new_ this all was for him, and Shiro couldn't help but empathize.  Even through the more prominent emotions Keith was feeling, Shiro could still detect a quiet awe at how _good_ it felt to be in love, or at least to like someone.

Shiro sighed, realizing just how sticky of a situation Keith was in.  "You want to like him."

Keith nodded into his hands, only grunting in response.  The unspoken response was enough for Shiro, as visions of Lance danced in his head.  He pushed Keith's thoughts away and hung his head to match Keith.

"I wish I could help you," Shiro said, and a pang of disappointment pounded against his chest.  "But this is something I have no expertise in."

"I know," Keith mumbled, his cracked voice miserable.

"I think we should just take it one step at a time.  Focus on getting the program fixed, and then we'll deal with it."  Shiro hummed through Keith's barrage of discouragement and frustration, trying to ground himself.  "If it turns out that the feelings aren't mutual, we can deal with that then.  Okay?"

_No no no it's not okay—_

"Yeah," Keith said.

Shiro didn't know what to say, what to do, to make him feel any better, so instead, he patted Keith on the back and stood up.  He mumbled a quick apology as he left the room, trying to think through Keith's restless thoughts.

* * *

Keith glared into the back of Lance's head.  He wasn't even fully conscious of the action until Shiro lightly nudged him and brought him back to reality.  He sighed and allowed his eyes to wander to the empty chair next to him, the seat he had reserved for Lance.

Apparently, Lance had had other ideas, as he currently sat at the far end of the table, actively ignoring Keith's presence.  Even his thoughts were elsewhere, adamantly focusing on the food in front of him and the people around him.

Keith understood what was happening.  It didn't mean he liked it, though.  The fact that Lance was putting so much distance between them gave Keith the impression that all of this was _his_ fault.  If he had been able to get a hold on his feelings, nothing would have turned out the way it did, and there wouldn't be this much uncomfortable tension between them.

Of course, Lance felt the same way.  Behind the thoughts more forefront in his mind, Keith was able to gather the guilt Lance was feeling.  It contrasted sharply with his pining and left a bad taste in Keith's mouth.

"He just feels bad for putting you through all this," Shiro mumbled through a bite of goo.

"He's not putting me through anything," Keith insisted, but he had successfully been brought back to the present.  Shiro hummed thoughtfully but didn't say anything more.

Keith rolled his eyes, earning a chuckle from Shiro.  He stuck his spoon into the food goo, turning his attention elsewhere.  Pidge was seated next to him, talking animatedly with Hunk in technical jargon he couldn't understand.  Probably about the mind meld program.

"Whatever the problem is," Pidge was saying, "we need this gone.  Like, now."  She gestured at her head.

Hunk nodded, his eyes wide.  "Yeah, I don't think I can handle another night of logarithms and differential equations.  Even _I_ don't dream about math that much!"

"I don't dream about math!" Pidge argued, leaning into the table to contest Hunk's statement.

"Then explain all the dreams I've been having about math.  If you love it so much, why don't you marry it?"  Hunk scoffed at his own joke.

"We're in space, you idiot!" Pidge huffed.  "There's not even anyone to officiate the wedding."

Hunk blinked once.  "Are you…implying that you would actually marry math if you could?"

"What?  No!"

"Wow," Hunk laughed, and Keith found himself breathing out a chuckle with him, "you're an even bigger nerd than I thought."

Pidge jumped up from the table, and Keith was certain she was going to try to fight Hunk right there.  Fortunately, Coran came through the kitchen door with a small tray of food and set it down next to Hunk, oblivious to the tension around him.

"I've got a traditional paladin dessert for you all," he said jovially, handing out plates from the tray.  Keith had to suppress a grimace when Coran handed him his, swallowing against the putrid smell of the purple, noodle-like structure.

"Thanks…Coran…" Pidge said, disappointment dripping off each syllable.  She pushed the plate off to the side pointedly and turned back to him.  "Have you learned anything new about the program?"

"The mind meld?"  Coran stroked a couple fingers through his mustache, pondering the question.  Keith listened half-heartedly, not entirely sure whether he wanted to hear good news or bad news.  He felt Shiro's hand on his back, and though it was reassuring, his chest still felt heavy.  "No, can't say I have."

"Maybe I can look at it later?" Hunk offered with a shrug.

Pidge raised an eyebrow, but she nodded when Hunk glared at her.  "Sure.  Apparently we need all the help we can get."

A too-loud laugh cut through the conversation and redirected Keith's attention to Lance at the end of the table.  Allura was sitting opposite of him, and though her look told a story of nothing but displeasure, Lance was acting as if he couldn't see it.  He quieted down enough to say something to her, and Keith couldn't hear what it was, but he felt a spike of lust.

He was flirting with her.

Lance, _his_ Lance, was flirting with someone else mere hours after confessing to him.

_I'm sorry._

Lance's apology flittered across Keith's mind, bathing his jealousy in a cool empathy.  Keith forced himself to take a deep breath in, reminding himself that it was all for show, that it wasn't real, and everything would work out eventually.

_I need to get over you_.

The second thought hit Keith with more force than he was prepared for, and his entire mind was suddenly engulfed in the fear of losing what he had only recently gained.  There was another giggle from the end of the table and a flush of deep red from inside of Lance's head, and Keith decided he didn't want to be there anymore.

Shiro put a hand on Keith's shoulder to stop him, but he brushed it off as he pushed himself away from the table, nearly knocking his chair over in the process.

_What's he—is he leaving?_

Keith tried not to react to Lance's thoughts, even as a wave of confusion hit him.  There was a tug on him, urging him to sit back down, or better, to go directly to Lance, but Keith fought through the feeling and started away.

The confusion was replaced by a painful, heavy weight inside him.  Keith could hear Lance fighting with himself— _stupid, you made everything worse—go after him—this is for the best—_ but he didn't dare turn around to face the inevitable.  Lance hadn't moved from his seat.

For a moment, Keith's vision wobbled and wavered, and he could see himself through Lance's eyes, his back walking away from him while Lance's mind screamed _idiot you fucked up why did you push it why did you—_

And then everything returned to normal and he saw the door in front of him instead of himself.  The opening of the door brought a new wave of _stop no come back I shouldn't have—_

But the door closed behind him without Lance ever speaking up, and Keith made his way back to his room with a heavy sigh and a heavier heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ^^' one more chapter to go!
> 
> Thanks to everyone that has read and enjoyed this fic. It means so much to me :)


	5. Chapter 5

Keith entered the training deck with a damning sense of foreboding.  His muscles were tense, his jaw clenched together as he ran over every possible outcome the day could bring.

Coran had summoned them all over the castle's intercom, rousing Keith from a rather peaceful sleep about Lance's family.  The program had been fixed, and it was finally the moment of truth.

"It was harder than it should have been," Pidge was telling Shiro.  "But once Hunk discovered the rusty rod, it was pretty much smooth sailing."

"I can't believe just one rusted rod would break this program so much," Hunk said, scratching his head.

"It wasn't just that."  Coran's voice boomed from the control center, his matter-of-fact tone cutting into the conversation in the middle of the training deck.  "The fragmentation of the data had been corrupted, and we needed to rewire the entire control panel to reverse the process."

Keith tuned out the rest of their conversation, deciding that he wasn't going to be able to keep up with whatever they were talking about.  Instead, he found his eyes darting around, looking for Lance.  He caught himself with a start that had even Shiro flinching, but he didn't quite feel guilty about it.

When the door to the deck opened again and revealed Lance, dressed in his pajamas and a robe, Keith's heart nearly stopped.  He saw the weary look Shiro gave him out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn't bring himself to care.  Having Lance around made him feel better, and Keith was going to relish the feelings for as long as the mind meld would allow.

"Morning," Lance yawned, stretching his arms high above his head.  Keith thought he was going to die, his heart beating rapidly against his chest and threatening to burst.  Lance met his eyes, and both of their breaths hitched in their throats.  They quickly looked away from each other, two distinct sensations of heat creeping up Keith's neck.

"Took you long enough," Pidge grumbled.

"Sorry I don't come at your beck and call, Pidge," Lance shot back, childish amusement lighting up Keith's insides.

"Hunk would," Pidge complained in a low tone.

Hunk threw his hands in the air with a short cry of frustration.  "That's totally apples and oranges!  Lance isn't in your head twenty-four-seven!"

Pidge just shrugged.  "Anyway, we fixed the program.  I don't know about you, but I am _so_ ready to get rid of this bond."

Keith was _so not_ ready to get rid of the bond.  He didn't know what would come next, and he wasn't sure he wanted to deal with the aftermath of it all.  He found himself looking at Lance again, trying to burn into his retinas the rose-colored lens through which he saw him, clinging to the idea of togetherness.

_I'm gonna miss him…_

Keith's heart sank as Lance's trepidation hit him.  Lance was so certain that Keith didn't, _couldn't_ , reciprocate his feelings, and the feeling of loss overwhelmed Keith.

"Well, let's do this thing," Lance said, his lighthearted and airy declaration betrayed only by Keith understanding how hard it was for Lance to keep up that mask.  He almost didn't recognize when a headset was shoved into his hands, and he blinked slowly as Pidge's small form came into focus in front of him.

"Put this on, and Coran will do the rest," she instructed, and Keith bit at his lip, reluctant to do as he was told.

He realized that he had come to enjoy the presence of Lance's mind.  The loud and rambunctious thoughts, the constant buzzing of excitement and activity, it was all so new and different to Keith, and he couldn't help but marvel at it all.  It had become a comfort, a knowledge that he wasn't really alone even when he had shut himself in his room.  He wasn't ready to go back to the silence of his own mind.

And most of all, he wasn't sure he could deal with the aftermath of the split.  If it turned out that he didn't actually reciprocate the feelings that Lance had felt so deeply, he didn't know how he could face him.  He didn't know how he would be able to go forward, knowing that such a light and wonderful feeling existed, but also that he could never hope to feel it again.

There was a nudge on his shoulder that made his nerves go haywire with the electricity that coursed through them.  He turned his head to meet Lance's soft eyes, and he felt himself relax a little under his gaze.

"You okay?" Lance asked in an undertone meant only for the two of them.

"Yeah," he breathed.  It was a lie, but Lance didn't have to know that.

"This was fun," Lance said, and Keith could feel the honesty in his words.

Keith nodded, not trusting the lump in his throat to make room for coherent language to come out.  Lance's headset was already on, and he gingerly pried the gear from Keith's hands before placing it atop Keith's head for him.  He rolled his eyes, but he appreciated Lance's understanding.

"All right," Coran's disembodied voice said, "all you need to do is treat this exactly like a normal exercise.  I'll control everything from up here, and with a little luck, you'll all be back in tip-top condition in just a few ticks!"

Keith sat down next to Lance and focused on the bond between them—between all of them, not just Lance.  It was hard through Lance's prominent thoughts, but slowly, he began to sense the presence of three other minds meshing with their thoughts.  None were as forefront as Lance, but Keith reluctantly clung on to the new thoughts, watching as they turned from a hazy gray into actual, coherent people, and suddenly, all their minds were connected again.

 _Is this supposed to happen?_   Hunk, with his anxiety spilling over into all of them.

 _It would make sense._   Shiro, a strong presence despite his uncertainty.

 _That doesn't make me like this any more._   Pidge, her grumbling complaints influencing all of their feelings.

 _At least it's almost over._   Lance, his optimism balancing out Pidge's negativity.

 _Is that a good thing?_   Keith, his accidental response coming out faster than he could squash it.  A confusing swirl of foreign emotions seemed to embrace him, washing him in sympathy, comfort, annoyance, and affection.

And then the emotions broke apart, fading against his own thoughts.  There were distinct pulses of his teammates, but Keith could no longer hear their thoughts.  He couldn't hear anything, and the emotions seemed so far away that they were almost nonexistent.

The first mind to leave his own was Pidge's, and then Hunk followed shortly after.  They were never together for that long, and so Keith couldn't bring himself to miss their presence.  Shiro's mind, however, seemed to fight to stay with Keith, the connection deep and thorough, but Shiro let go with only a little coaxing, and Keith let himself breathe.

The gentle pulsing of Lance's mind stayed with him for a bit longer, even though he could feel it pulling away.  He realized quickly that he had been digging his nails into Lance's mind, forcing them to stay together even as Lance tried to leave.  In an act he was so sure he would regret later, he released his grip on Lance's mind, and the blue paladin was sent tumbling away into the void.

And then Keith was alone.

* * *

Keith kept looking around for something.  He didn't know what, exactly— _he knew exactly what_ —but he felt empty without it.  He was restless, lonely, missing…something.  Someone.  The same someone who had shared his mind with him for what seemed like an eternity he could no longer live without.

His room was too quiet without Lance's random thoughts lighting up his head.  For as much as Keith had complained about him, he had become much too comfortable with the shared mind situation.  And now he found himself missing that connection, that comfort that Lance radiated so effortlessly.

He was out the door before his mind was even made up.

He found Lance, alone, in the lounge, feet propped up on the couch as he sipped from a packet of space juice.  He hadn't even noticed Keith enter the room.

Lance jumped when Keith cleared his throat, and Keith waited for the action to be mirrored in Lance's feelings.  He bit his lip when the emotion never transmitted to Keith.

"Hey," Lance said coolly, watching Keith with only a faint dusting of red on his cheeks to give away his thoughts.

"Hey," Keith replied, and his voice sounded hollow, echoing against the emptiness of his mind.

Lance quirked his mouth into a wry grin, and Keith couldn't tell what he was thinking.  "Looking for me?"

Keith nodded as he approached the couch, his movements stiff and unplanned.  He didn't know what he was doing, just that he needed to do it.  He still hadn't even worked out the complexities of his own feelings yet.  He didn't know how he felt about Lance; he only knew the emptiness that the separation had caused, the strong urge to be near him, to soak up something from him.

"I miss you," he blurted, and then a heat broke out across his cheeks as he realized that that was _not_ what he should have said.  "I—I mean, the, uh, mind thing—"

Lance laughed, and shit it sounded so _nice_ , "Are you saying you _liked_ hearing my thoughts?"  He moved his legs and patted the spot next to him in a silent request.

A fondness bloomed in Keith's chest, and he was so painfully aware that it was his own that he had to take a minute to process it fully.  He fell into the couch heavily, his arm brushing against Lance's, and his breath hitched in his throat.

"Well, it was nice while it lasted, at least," Lance said, looking at Keith for a beat longer and then turning to face the wall.

"What do you mean?"  The question felt weird to ask; he should've _known_ what Lance meant.

Lance just shrugged.  "The whole thing, really.  It was fun getting to know Hunk so much better, and…"

"And?" Keith goaded when Lance closed his mouth and shook his head a little.

"And…I dunno, it was nice having you connected to me."

Keith squirmed a little, suddenly finding his position on the couch uncomfortable.  "I—"

"You don't have to try to make me feel better or anything," Lance interrupted, but his voice was strained.  "This is my own problem.  Liking you, I mean.  I just have to get over it.  Don't worry about me hitting on you or anything.  I won't even bring it up."

"I…" _don't want that_ , his mind finished where his voice failed.  The honesty of his own thoughts surprised him, and he wasn't entirely sure what to do with this new knowledge.

"I mean, I get if you're uncomfortable being around me," Lance continued, as if Keith wasn't having a crisis right next to him.  "I'm sure I'd be weirded out, too, if I were in your place.  I totally understand if you want to—avoid me, or something.  I just don't want this to mess up our team."

"Lance…"

Lance was still staring at the wall, ignoring Keith as he rambled on.  "Obviously, forming Voltron is way more important than a stupid crush.  I know that, you know that, everyone knows that.  So I'm just gonna get over myself, and you don't even have to worry about a thing!  Okay?"

"Lance."  Keith reached over and tugged on his chin, forcing the other to look at him.  Lance's pupils were small and scared, and he bit at his lip as if he were waiting for some kind of harsh rejection.

Keith allowed himself only a moment to wallow in how little Lance expected of him.  Then he pulled Lance closer, and—

The taste of Lance's lips against his was a shock against his own, a feeling of _rightness_ which he hadn't known since their minds had been forced apart.  The physical proximity of Lance made up for the emotional distance which had left Keith empty, and he drank in every second they spent together, pulling Lance further into his arms as if to bring back that feeling of the mind meld, to hear his thoughts again, to know who _Lance_ was, to know who Keith was to Lance.

Lance split his lips first, begging for something neither of them had had in so long, and Keith eagerly complied.  The world faded away as his mind screamed _yes, this is what I want, this is what I've been looking for_ and Keith melted into the feeling of being together and whole and _right_.

But Lance was also the first to pull away.  Reality came back into sharp focus, and suddenly, Keith was just Keith again.  He couldn't feel Lance anymore.

"That…" Lance said, licking his lips uncertainly.  "This isn't right.  I'm…what is this?"

Keith didn't want to respond.  He wanted to pull Lance back to him and bask in his revelation that this was what he wanted, what he had discovered from being so completely bound to Lance.  He tried to convey his thoughts through his eyes.  "It's me, Lance."

"But…I thought—"

"They _are_ my feelings," Keith said, echoing their earlier conversation.

Lance stared at him for a long while, and Keith was content to exist in silence, as long as Lance was there.  "Are you sure?  What if it's just a side effect?"

"Stop," Keith commanded, and Lance's mouth snapped shut.  "You're so loud sometimes.  All of your thoughts kept on screaming over mine, and you led me to believe I didn't actually like you."

"What?"

"I like you," Keith repeated, forming each syllable slowly so that he could commit them to his own memory.  "I don't know when, and I sure as hell don't know how, but your presence in my head became something I started to like, and if I can't have that back—I don't even know if I necessarily _want_ it back—I'd at least like you."

"You like me?"  Lance's face was deep red, his eyes wide, his jaw slack.

Keith nodded.  "Uh, yeah, that's what I just said."

"But I thought…"

"You thought wrong."  He rolled his eyes and took Lance's hand, trying to convey through touch exactly what he meant by his confession.

Lance stared down at his hand, warm inside Keith's grip, and Keith fought against his own curiosity to know what he was thinking.  He needed patience.

"You like me?"  Lance's voice was distant as if he were talking to himself, but Keith squeezed his hand in response, anyway.  Lance met his eyes and they stared at each other for a long moment, both studying each other.

Finally, Keith couldn't take his uncertainty anymore.  "Are you okay?"

Lance answered his question with a sheepish grin and a nod.  He leaned in a little, and Keith felt that magnetic pull he thought he'd never feel again.  He rested his free hand on Lance's leg, and their lips touched again, quicker and less poignant this time.  When Lance pulled away this time, he was smiling.

"This worked out way better than I was expecting," he said, a tiny bubble of laughter escaping at the end.

Keith raised an eyebrow, but he was smiling all the same.  "Let's just hope we can form Voltron now that you aren't pining over me anymore."

Lance's smile fell immediately.  "I—that's _not_ why we couldn't form Voltron!"

"But you do admit you were pining," Keith pointed out, and he found that he liked Lance's fluster.

"I didn't admit to anything!" he shouted, his face beet red and his palms sweating.

Keith hummed in response, grin growing wide as Lance floundered to save face.

Lance stopped suddenly, looking Keith straight in his eyes.  "Wait, so is this really happening?"

Keith's brows furrowed together.  "Mm, yeah."

"Oh, okay.  Good."  He didn't say anything more, but he did lean back on the couch, pressing his head into Keith's shoulder.  Getting comfortable again with the added weight at his side, he decided that, as weird as it was, the mind meld was the best thing to ever happen to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked the ending ^^' Thanks to everyone who read, commented, and left kudos on this work. I can't even express how much it means to me.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu @ my [tumblr](http://stellunaria.tumblr.com/)


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